Social interactions like +1s on Google+, Facebook likes, shares, and comments, etc. are called social signals.
With the rise of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Google and Bing have started taking into account social signals to help determine website ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their brand on social media as a long-term investment to drive qualified traffic, rather than aiming for short-term benefits like search ranking placement. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s own web spam team has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social signals, as social trends and relationships tend to change too quickly to fully map out. Without a full ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to social signals over other aspects of their search algorithm. In short, Google’s strategy is a sensible one - “wait and see” how things develop over time, as websites that provide true value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google naturally wants to display higher in its search listings.
Social Signals – Which Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to for measuring social signals include:
With over 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant social network in the world. It has been estimated that an average post on Facebook can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a ton of sales on your site, don’t be quick to dismiss Facebook as an important part of your online business strategy, as Google uses social data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems to have the most influence on search rankings of all social media sites.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second largest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out each day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer online and places great importance on tweeting posts that provide great value to followers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google+
Google’s own social site naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are interacting on GooglePlus every week. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that provide important social metrics, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon,Reddit, and Digg.
(A number of social sites provide important signals that can affect your search engine rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines like Google and Bing track a number of social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, likes, and comments you have, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, how influential the person sending a tweet is, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many people are following you, amount and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Digg, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related signals that can indirectly influence search engine rankings. These include desirable and undesirable factors, such as links from authority sites (backlinks) (not as important as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by visitors [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only grow your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to track, measure and analyze social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your products, brand, or company on social media, spy on the competition, measure the impact of campaigns, identify opportunities for engagement, and help you take preventative measures against the spread of negative comments or feedback by online users. It can also provide you with valuable information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific brands, products, businesses, or topics.
As a tool for business intelligence, the ability to monitor social media is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by a cross-section of people including digital reputation management companies, marketing teams, market researchers, social engagement and community personnel, professional sales reps, and social media marketing agencies. Typically, smaller businesses don’t have the budget to pay social media monitoring professionals to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately different technology companies have developed affordable tools that facilitate the active monitoring of a variety of social media channels, allowing you to identify what is being said online about your brand or products allowing you to react to conversations and interact with consumers in a timely fashion.
We have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools and technologies that you may want to check out. Go here to learn more about this:
(Are you looking for an effective tool to help you measure your social signals?)
In this article, you will learn about a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs for tracking social media signals and increasing your social media exposure.
Introducing …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics WordPress Plugin
Description Of Plugin
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social analytics plugin for WordPress that is designed to make increasing your social media exposure online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple premise – SocialMetricsPro tracks how each signal is performing and returns either a red or green indicator. The site owner’s task is to change all red squares into greens.
(A system that any website owner can operate … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that get shared the most show up green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber and red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro on a network of 2,000+ sites over a period of three months. During this period, all they focused on was turning the “reds” to “greens” and then keeping their metrics on “green”. From these tests, they noticed that their top 10 best performing sites saw an improvement of up to 360% more traffic, 410% more keywords ranked in the first page of Google and they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to SocialMetricsPro developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing can significantly impact your search rankings, traffic and revenue!)
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits Of Using SocialMetricsPro
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more directly from your WP Dashboard on your website:
Fast And Simple To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Social Metrics Pro installs like every other plugin. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your task is to convert more red squares into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social media signals so you know which social marketing campaigns require investing more effort and where to optimize.
Track Social Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro provides a powerful dashboard to monitor social media activity across leading networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Pinterest directly from your WordPress admin area.
Social Metrics Pro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social media networks work best for my site?
- Which social campaigns are performing the best on these social networks?
- Which are my most popular posts?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all this information is available on-demand, with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively tracks the social sites that you care most about!)
Features
SocialMetricsPro offers website owners with many great features. Below we have listed a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with built-in and external widgets. Social Metrics Pro shows the latest stats right on your WordPress dashboard, add popular content to your sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- 1-click auto-upgrade functionality. You can update Social Metrics Pro with a single click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to be notified via email whenever a new version is released.
- Plugin even works on the smallest hosting. Social reports are compiled in seconds, using little hosting resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time spent retrieving the information and the server memory consumed when gathering and compiling data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort, search and filter the information as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post authors, publishing date, post type, or category.
- Export Data: You can export and plot data in Excel for further analysis. Data can be exported in tab-delimited and comma-separated file formats, and imported to the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(SocialMetricsPro is simple to use … just turn all reds into greens!)
User Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials and comments users have provided for SocialMetricsPro:
”As with any cool plugin, it solves a very simple problem – how to view how well your WordPress posts are being promoted.” Adam Small, Marketing Tech Blog
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”If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve.” Goes one of the most important sayings in business. And this is particularly true for tracking of your social mentions I found. There were two things that helped me a great deal to increase sharing after installing Social Metrics: First, I was able to see that some of my articles would perform much better on networks I wasn’t particularly using, such as StumbleUpon for example. Secondly, I could filter out the best performing content more easily and analyse what makes my readers share. Since then I have focused strongly on producing and replicating those posts that performed best.” Leo Widrich, Co-Founder of Buffer
Plugin Tips
SocialMetricsPro comes with a practical, step-by-step guide showing you how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens).
Product Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and comes with free support and free lifetime updates, backed by a no-risk, 60-day, complete money-back guarantee.
Software Price
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License Edition – This edition lets you install SocialMetricsPro on a single site. Cost includes free lifetime updates and support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Edition – This license lets you activate Social Metrics Pro on all the sites that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: The price of SocialMetricsPro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price when this content was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the product author when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details:
Additional Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Download This Product
As mentioned earlier, social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been elevating the importance given to social signals as part of its ranking algorithm.
No website owner can afford to ignore how important social media is to their online success. SocialMetricsPro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives you immediate feedback on the success of your social marketing campaigns and guides you where to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP admin area.
Get this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to save money on outsourcing your social campaigns.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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